Joseph asks…
Have you ever used one of those mass email marketing companies? Do they work?
I’m talking about the ones that provide millions of email addresses for $30.
WMAIV answers:
I have found the list provided by most cheap (under$200) services are very poor quality. Most of the email accounts were at one time valid but many have been closed for a very long time. Many of the accounts are Hotmail and Yahoo which are also opened and closed faster than a windmill spins in a typhoon. Effective email marketing requires not only valid accounts, but it also requires a filtered and targeted audience.
Filtered: The members of the list have had the opportunity to opt out or get off of the mailing list and have instead chosen to stay listed.
Targeted: The products and services you sell are the products and services people on the list are interested in reading about and buying. You don’t want to try to sell dust busters to a list developed by a pornography website. Selling a dust buster would make better sales from a list developed from Home-and-Garden-type websites.
Ask the list developer what the ratios are. Ratios of valid mail accounts to dropped. Ratio of sales to number of leads provided. Ask what the target audience of the list is. Ask how the list has been developed and how it has been tested. Ask how many copies of the list have been sold and how many more times will they be selling the same list. Ask for a 30 day money back policy or a free trial period.
If they can’t or won’t give you good solid answers to these questions, I would look for another list company.
